I'm a poet and writer living in the South Jersey shore area. I moved here from North Jersey in January of 2009 after the 2008 death of my husband William J. (Bill) Higginson, author of The Haiku Handbook, to be closer to my daughter and family. I'm a mom, grandma, and occasional poet-teacher for the NJSCA. My work has appeared in many journals, and in twenty-some books (including chapbooks). I read at the Dodge Festival in 2010, and have enjoyed two poetry residencies at VCCA (January 2011; March 2015). Please visit my blog: http://penhart.wordpress.com and my website: www.2hweb.net/penhart. My newest books are Recycling Starlight and The Resonance Around Us:http://mountainsandriverspress.org/TitleView.aspx

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​Absence

All the maple leavesrain down in this cold wind,yellow in the dark,

and I feel the dead again,their lips grazing mine,their breath on my cheeks.

I spin among them,lifting my faceout of deep absenceinto this shining.

One Childhood Illness

One childhood illness I lie in my mother's bed,turning the pages of an antique travel guideto some mythical northern land,tracing its India Ink sketchesof wooded streams, waterfalls,a lone canoe on a birch-fringed lake,and always in the background,mountains.

Propped against two pillows,I drink my tea staring at the waterfallwhose crystal body cascades down a cliff,hear its thunder, feel its white miston my lips. Somewhere, behind itis the cave I remember, the secret cryptwhere the stone has been rolled awayand the water sings.

Tea Ceremonyfor Eleanor Ecob Morse, my great-great-grandmother, 1890

She sits at her worktable,lifts a blue glass cup to admire its gilded rimas she begins to paint small violets on its sides.

By evening, she will have donethe whole set, blessing each blue sphere where violets bloom.

She does not feel the weight of snow that fills each cup she raises to the window’s light, the cold of blowing flakes against her hands,or the sudden chill that finds her lipswhen she pantomimes a sip.

This morning, the sky beyond her window deepens to the blue of finished cupsas I hold each one up to catch the sun.--all the above poems from Grandmother's Milk (Singular Speech press, 1995).

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